In an effort to spread knowledge throughout the newsroom, those of us who are not reporters have been asked to give workshops to share some of our skills. The thing I chose to share this first time was Microsoft Excel.

As I pitched it, it was Excel 101: Starting out with the very basics, and getting as far as we could go in the scheduled half hour.

It seemed to go well. We covered:

Basic navigation

Cell References, relative and absolute

Formulas, values and formatting

Basic cell calculations

Excel Formulas (SUM and AVERAGE)

Then we got into a real-world dataset and looked at sorting and filtering and calculations. At the very end I gave a peek at PivotTables just to demonstrate what Excel is capable of.

I was invited to give a presentation on mapping to the local chapter of the Online News Association a while back. You can see it online here.

I used the reveal.js framework to get it online, so you can see an expanded version of my notes for most slides by using the down arrow on the keyboard or by clicking the down arrow in the presentation.

I drew most of the slides with my iPad + Pencil. Initially I was using it to brainstorm, and then thought, why not just make these the slides. I think it turned out ok.